by Lindsay J. Patterson

Jonathan McDowell has a very personal connection with outer space. A planet bears his name.

Planet 4589, otherwise known as McDowell, is a minor planet belonging to an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is about 200 million miles from Earth and is only about a mile wide, said McDowell, who lives in Somerville by way of England.

McDowell said he has been an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) for the past 12 years, and has connections to the International Astronomical Union, the group that holds the right to name things in space.

“They named the planet after me because they’re running out of names,” he said.

The scientist who discovered the planet died before evidence of its existence had become concrete, and McDowell said it is considered bad form to name a planet after the discoverer.

McDowell said it is a safer bet to find a comet, which is automatically named for its discoverer.

Although McDowell enjoys traveling, he said he will probably never visit his planet.

McDowell’s interest in space goes beyond normal childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut. His father was an English physicist, McDowell said. “I grew up in science departments everywhere. All my babysitters were physics graduate students. I grew up thinking everyone over 30 had a Ph.D.”

When he was eight, his family spent a year at NASA during the moon landings, which was extremely influential in his young life. “I remember walking home from school and thinking how amazing it would be that people were walking on another world,” he said.

McDowell gravitated towards math in school and enjoyed reading about the universe. “I found the immensity of the universe, and the awesomeness of the scales profound and worth exploring,” he said.

After studying in Cambridge University in England, McDowell made his way to the Cambridge in Massachusetts to work at the world famous CfA.

The CfA is the union of the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and is the biggest astronomical lab in the world. “We’re proud that we’re big and we’ve done a lot,” said McDowell, citing many groundbreaking discoveries that the CfA has made since its inception in 1955.

“It’s great because if you ever need a question answered there’s probably an expert right down the hall,” he said.

McDowell said his main area of expertise is black holes. “A black hole is a place where space has become like time.”

There are two types of black holes, he said. Little black holes are formed when matter collapses under the force of so much gravity that not even nuclear forces can stop it shrinking. The matter falls into the middle and creates a black hole, which swallows everything around it.

The second type are much bigger, ranging from million to a billion times the mass of the sun. They formed early in the history of the universe under still unknown circumstances. McDowell said that in the middle of every galaxy there’s a black hole. “They’re weird stuff where the funkiest parts of physics become huge so you can see it. It’s a great lab.”

McDowell said he considers astrophysics to be closer to metaphysics than engineering. “We want to know where we came from. Astrophysics helps answer the question of where Earth came from.”
Scientists at the CfA discovered that every atom in the human body is composed of stardust, which means you were cooked in the center of a star, said McDowell.

He said that a carbon atom has retained its identity throughout the history of the earth, and therefore the same carbon atoms in your body have been the same carbon atoms that were born in the creation of the universe. “Understanding the evolution of the galaxy is understanding our own ancestry.”

The sodium atoms in distant galaxies give off the same exact shade of yellow as sodium atoms at work in a street lamp. “Life is a game, and astronomy has strict rules,” McDowell said.

“A distant galaxy plays by the same rules as a street lamp in Somerville.” How we connect the two, he said, is the question.

Right now, McDowell said he has his head in many questions. He’s been working with telescopes in the desert of Arizona to study the light spectrums within distant quasars. “Encoded in the light we catch from the sky is information about what the quasar is doing.”

He said that the most efficient energy used on earth is nuclear fusion, which is less than 1% efficient. Gravity, used by quasars, is 40% more efficient in turning mass into energy. “This may turn out to be the key to the universe.”

McDowell usually works closer to home with the Chandra X-ray telescope, which is operated from Kendall Square. According to the Chandra X-ray Observatory Web site, Chandra was launched from the space shuttle Columbia five years ago, and has the ability to detect and capture images of X-ray sources billions of light years away.

McDowell said Chandra provides a good way to find black holes. “Gas folds into black holes and gets a few million degrees hot on the way in, and then it shines X-ray hot.”

“X-rays are the only way to see the most exotic images,” he said. Pictures from Chandra are accessible to the public on the observatory’s Web site at chandra.harvard.edu.

Another of McDowell’s projects is creating software that connects together all the astronomy data into one convenient resource for astronomers.

“I am probably best known for my writing,” McDowell said. He written about the history of the space program and writes a column for the magazine Sky & Telescope called “Mission Update,” which chronicles recent developments in space astronomy and planetary exploration. He also writes a weekly online newsletter about the space program, and his personal Web site, planet4589.org, with links to his other projects.

“It’s important to have many different projects on the go,” said McDowell. He said he thinks less specialization in a scientific field is healthy, and he tries to keep in touch with all of science as best he can.

“I’m interested in everything that’s out there,” he said. “I’ve worked on everything from asteroids to the Big Bang. Everything is so fascinating; I like to dabble in everything I can.”

Most of McDowell’s projects start with a casual conversation leading to collaborations with other scientists. “With collaboration, you go places you wouldn’t think of going yourself,” he said.

McDowell praised his field for having dedicated members and a strong sense of community. He said he had recently attended a retirement party for a colleague who was giving up his office at 97-years-old. “Once you’re in it, you’re in it for life.”

McDowell himself has no plans of leaving the CfA anytime soon. He’s moved back and forth between Somerville and Cambridge during his time at Harvard, but presently makes his home in Union Square. “Living in Somerville is great,” he said. “It’s such a diverse city, it’s a perfect mix between urban and suburban, and still has a feeling of community.”

He said the Boston area’s many centers of learning and intellectual ferment make it an exciting place to be. “Living here and working with some of the best scientists on the planet, what more could you want?”

With his time not spent contemplating the star, McDowell is active in local progressive politics, with membership in the Somerville Green Party and Planned Parenthood.

He seeks to give back to the taxpayers who support him by giving astronomy talks at local high schools and helping with the Observatory Nights at the CfA. On the third Thursday of every month the public can visit the CfA and get a closer view of Boston’s night sky. “It’s our responsibility to communicate our excitement to the community,” said McDowell.